1S19-16: Temporary Faith – Saul’s Lesson on Fleeting Obedience

“And he stripped off his clothes also, and prophesied before Samuel in like manner, and lay down naked all that day and all that night. Wherefore they say, Is Saul also among the prophets?”-1 Samuel 19:24

There’s an amazing lesson about how the Word of God is so powerful it can literally stop the murderous intentions of a group of men who are on the rampage…

At Naioth, Adonai’s words were like a brick wall that halted Saul’s murderous goal to eliminate David.

However, there’s something else we shouldn’t overlook.

As soon as the prophesying ended, Saul’s wickedness and desire to slaughter David returned.

There’s another huge lesson here.

It is that simple exposure to God’s Word is insufficient to achieve lasting transformation.

If you don’t allow the Word to take residence in the depths of your soul, you’ll soon turn back to living by your sinful nature…

And you’ll turn back to the ways of the world.

Yeshua spoke about this in his parable of the sower.

Let’s take a look at it right now.

 ^“The farmer sows the word.
Some people are like seed along the path,
where the word is sown.
As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and
takes away the word that was sown in them.
Others, like seed sown on rocky places,
hear the word and at once receive it with joy.
But since they have no root,
they last only a short time.
When trouble or persecution comes
because of the word, they quickly fall away.
Still others, like seed sown among thorns,
hear the word; but the worries of this life,
the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires
for other things come in and choke the word,
making it unfruitful. Others, like seed sown
on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and
produce a crop—some thirty, some sixty,
some a hundred times what was sown.”
-Mark 4:14-20

We shouldn’t be surprised at this phenomenon.

Heck, all you have to do is do a quick search on YouTube where you’ll find channel after channel dedicated to those who were once believers in the God of Israel but had renounced that faith and become atheists.

Or how about the hundreds of thousands of people who go to some evangelical event, hear the Gospel truth, and fall down (like Saul did) stunned by the power of God’s Word…

But then only a few days later, they’re back to their perverse fornicating ways.

The old sinful nature had reared its ugly head and won again.

Saul could not resist the truth of God’s Word (no being in the universe can).

But as soon the prophesying ended, so did its potency on Saul like a scoop of vanilla ice cream melting away on a hot Los Angeles sidewalk.

So don’t make the mistake of thinking that just because Saul fell down in obedience for a short time, that somehow indicated restored fellowship with the Lord or something.

It obviously did not.

Saul’s rebellion was so deeply entrenched in his soul that it baffled his own son Jonathan who couldn’t believe how irrational and crazy his father had become. 

I imagine David also was scratching his head as to why Saul despised him so much.

Saul had become possessed by an irrational hate born from the very depths of hell itself.

NEXT TIME WE BEGIN 1ST SAMUEL CHAPTER TWENTY